Seeking books for children in Ghana  a contagious mission

Contributed photo
These children of Shama village, in the western region of Ghana, are shown during vacation Bible school, provided by Agnes Mensah as part of her Grace Community Outreach mission. Her summer religious teaching in Ghana helped Mensah build relationships with village leaders, inevitably helping her open eight libraries. Her goal is a library in each of the more than 170 villages.

CORPUS CHRISTI - Agnes Mensah dreamed of getting books to children in rural villages of Republic of Ghana.

"If they can read, they can write well," she said.

"If they write well, they can pass exams.

"If they pass, they can succeed in life."

Mensah, 54, understands, because she is one of them.

She was raised in the Shama fishing village in the country's western region.

It's one of 10 regions with more than 170 villages — some with populations of more than 2,000 each — in the west African country, colonized by the British. English is the formal language, despite more than 70 spoken dialects.

Census information does not include hundreds of other, smaller villages, Mensah said.

So those are the ones she targeted first — now having opened eight libraries with more than 10,000 books gathered in Corpus Christi.

"In famine, you cannot get a lot with a hoe," Mensah said, shaking her head side to side, before raising her eyes toward her living room ceiling. "Education will give these children jobs and their future is now bright because of the libraries."

Mensah is founder and director of Grace Community Outreach. She's a member of Corpus Christi Christian Fellowship, which has supported her dream in many ways.

"Church members have brought and bought books," said Rev. Donald Leavell. "Our role is to help Agnes any way we can. She is humble, but committed to educating the children in Ghana, and we are committed to help spread her mission all over Ghana."

The church has been involved for 26 years in more than 50 home and foreign ministries, Leavell said. For Mensah, the support has helped fund purchase and shipping of her books, and paid for transportation for others to join her summer mission trips.

Mensah came to Corpus Christi in 1999 with her husband, a professor at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. They raised three children, now adults, in Ohio.

The past 12 summers she has visited 38 Ghanaian villages, reaching more than 10,000 children with her mission's vacation Bible school. Relationships she built with village chiefs and elders helped her begin establishing one-room libraries three years ago in village community centers.

"I will say to a chief: 'If you will give me a room and put up shelves and paint them, I will bring you books,' " Mensah said. "They are more than excited to do the work."

In 2010 Mensah and her supporters opened libraries in seven villages and another was opened in April 2012. Each library has more than 1,000 books. In some villages, chiefs volunteer as library aides.

Now Mensah is working directly with the country's department of education, which previously only provided students with workbooks, which remained at school. After Mensah established a nonprofit library organization the government helped dedicate some rooms in state-owned community centers for her libraries. And officials recently agreed to pay salaries for two librarians at each location. There now is a library coordinator who shuffles books between the village libraries to keep new material available to children.

"Books are like treasures," said Raph Mahoney Assefuah, Grace Community Outreach library coordinator, in an email. "The chiefs, opinion leaders, government officials, parents and other members of the communities are enthused and thankful for they have witnessed a tremendous improvement in the children and their whole communities. This year I started to shift the books from one village to another. We hope to have more libraries for the other communities who have none."

"It is something they get to keep," Mensah said. "And they can check books out to take home."

The cards also are used to log the students' reading progress on computers, donated to her mission in 2011. In May a local cellphone company donated modems for four of the libraries, and some children at those locations are being matched with e-pal students in the U.S.Some of the village schools have established a designated "library hour" or "reading day" for students, Mensah said, where children read to community members.

One 10-year-old boy has read 91 books.

"He's one of the children promoted recently to 5th grade," Mensah said, her hand over her heart. "Teachers have to prepare more now, because since the children have books and are reading, they ask many more questions. They want to know what is going on throughout the world."

Mensah first revealed her library dream in a women's literature class at Del Mar College, when Professor Barb Craig asked students to share their goals.

"I told Agnes we can do this," said Craig, who was raised by a father who taught Mexican immigrants to read English in his Chicago home basement.

Craig supported Mensah's dream by posting announcements of the library project at the college, and she began scouring yard sales for children's books. She hands out small orange information cards to yard sale visitors to seek books and monetary donations for the mission.

Mensah's dream is contagious — filling her garage three times with boxes of books stacked to its ceiling.

"I want them gone," said her husband Peter Mensah, as he looked at his car in the driveway. "But then, she will fill it again."

Other churches now also are donating books.

"The results are already huge," said Pastor Ken De Koning, 65, with Waldron Road Baptist Church, who has accompanied Mensah to Ghana.

"Looking into the kids' faces is like seeing fireworks," De Koning said. "You see the machinery of the children's brains moving. It's a beautiful thing."